More leaked documents from the trove of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden ...

[struggle4progress]

showed Australia was listening in on communications between Indonesian officials and their American legal advisors, and offered to share their findings with the NSA. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that Australia stumbled onto trade talks – as has been noted before, everyone’s listening to each other, but the No.1 rule is: you shouldn’t get caught. The documents, according to a report in The New York Times, reveal the vast scale of Australia’s listening apparatus in Indonesia – Australian spies have obtained 1.8 million encryption keys used to secure private communications and can decrypt pretty much all of them.

These latest NSA leaks show impeccable timing yet again: US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jakarta for bilateral meetings. Kerry will deliver a speech calling for global action on climate change, saying the world is heading towards a “tipping point” and mocking deniers, but in meetings Indonesia is expected to raise the spying reports and also its concerns over Australia’s border protection regime with him ...

10 Things You Need To Know This Morning In Australia
Paul Colgan
Feb 17, 2014, 8:47 AM

emphasis added

[Cali_Democrat]

1. The goal of these revelations is obviously to knee cap the administration.

This is one of many instances where these kinds of revelations come out right before high ranking US officials meet with foreign leaders. This is no longer about revealing NSA activities within the US. It is about revealing anything and everything in order to cause maximum damage and get a Republican in office in in Jan 2017.

Kerry wants to discuss climate change? You think libertarian Snowdenwald gives a damn about climate change?

Ron Paul is currently floating a petition to grant clemency to Snowden.

Greenwald would lurve for Rand or Ron Paul to become President, but too bad for him it will never happen!



Oh...

Why did it take a Democratic administration for Snowden to become a dissident?

Snowden may have leaned libertarian on some issues, but he also exhibited strong support for America's security state apparatus. He didn't just work for it as a quiet dissident. Four years before he would leak the country's secrets, Snowden was cheering its actions and insisting that it needed healthy funding. To anyone who questioned US actions in his favored online hangout, he could be derisive.

Livid about the across-the-board defense cuts that were planned under Obama, Snowden acidly joked that "aybe we could just outsource our defense needs to india."

Worse yet, during a remarkable January 2009 chat, Snowden wrote that Obama had "appointed a fucking politician to run the CIA." In that same conversation, he vented his rage over reading a New York Times article about US actions in Iran, which was based on confidential leaks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024467097

[MADem]

4. Amazing how Snowden hasn't come up with any "Russia is doing this-or-that" revelations!

Or any big news about the People's Liberation Army Unit that hacks fricken EVERYTHING...!

He won't bite the hands that feed him, of course....

[Cali_Democrat]

6. Interesting indeed!

He runs off to Hong Kong (Chinese protectorate) and then Russia.

Interesting destinations!

Of course we all know that China and Russia would never engage in any kind of espionage...

Only evil America does that.

[MADem]

24. And supposedly, he used a data vacuum that scooped up a million files...I can't believe that not a

single ONE was about Russia or China...and the way they acquire intel~!

We must be pretty doggone incompetent if we haven't figured any of that out, and there wasn't one document in that million devoted to, say, countermeasure strategies, given all the hacking that comes out of those nations!

The thing that is starting to stand out about ES's revelations is that they're all about every country in the world...EXCEPT Russia.

Makes ya wonder.

[TheMathieu]

9. Because Russia isn't doing anything. It's too busy being a beacon of freedom.

[Luminous Animal]

10. That makes absolutely no sense. Russia is not a partner to the NSA.

The documents that Snowden copied reveal surveillance by U.S. and our 5 eyes partners.

How, without being employed by a Russian contractor or hacking into their systems, would he have access to anything that they are doing?

It would be really cool, though, if their were a Russian equivalent to Snowden and that person sought asylum in the US.

[MADem]

21. So....this is all about "getting back at the NSA," not the whole "information should be free and NO

ONE should be spying" canard that was being shopped earlier?

You're seriously telling me that NSA doesn't have a clue as to sources and methods used by Russia's FSB and China's PLA?

I have one thing to say in reply to that:

[Comrade Grumpy]

15. I imagine it's the press outlets controlling the time of the leaks.

As in this one--the New York Times published it, not Edward Snowden.

And I don't know that they're timed to embarrass the administration as much as to garner attention with stories related to current US foreign policy events. Maybe the political vicissitudes of Obama aren't driving the Times' calculations.

[pnwmom]

26. Exactly. Snowden's doing whatever he can to hurt our international relations. n/t

[Fumesucker]

2. I can just imagine Bletchley Park in WWII run by corporate contractors

We'd all be speaking either German or Japanese.

[struggle4progress]

3. Contracting work out can offer additional legal avenues for cover-up

which (I suspect) accounts for some of the Republican enthusiasm for it

[Fumesucker]

8. You might recall that the Telecoms were given retroactive immunity n/t

[struggle4progress]

11. That was disgusting but it's a separate issue

[Fumesucker]

14. Just using it as an example of using corporations for legal razzle dazzle, coverup and subterfuge

Proverbs 28:1

[struggle4progress]

16. The telecom immunity issue was yet more evidence that having lots of money

can buy freedom-from-prosecution for recognizably criminal acts: the telecoms actually got Congress to change the law to save them from the consequences of their behavior

But my original point was this: although in some ways government holds a lot of power, it is subject to the electorate through elected officials, in a way that private companies are not. Elected officials may be able to demand documents; FOIA requests may force production of documents. But these avenues may not be exploitable in the case of contractors, who may be able to claim (say) that only the actual final work product produced under contract can be made available to lawmakers. For such reasons, out-sourcing work through private contract may reduce accountability

[MannyGoldstein]

5. That gave me the best laugh I've had all day

Even though it's not funny, really.

[Fumesucker]

7. Honestly Manny I shudder to think of today's military up to a threat level of WWII Axis powers

Not the actual trigger pullers, fighter pilots and so on or even the support troops, they would serve admirably but they would be let down horribly by today's corporations who have no loyalty to anyone or anything beyond profit.

Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.

Machiavelli of all people thought mercenaries were scum, said anyone who used them would eventually be betrayed by them.

ETA: A sword has to have both a fine cutting edge and a strong back if it's supposed to do what it needs to do, nowadays the troops are the scalpel sharp cutting edge and the corporations are the oh-so-brittle backbone.

The light from fucked won't get to us before the heat death of the universe.

[MannyGoldstein]

12. I can see it now...

The moment that war is declared, all F-35 aircraft spontaneously combust.

This *has* all gotten berserk and dysfunctional, while sucking huge amounts of cash.

[Luminous Animal]

13. Oh the horrors of being exposed as not the standard for freedom. The empire now has to (ahem)

explain themselves.

[struggle4progress]

17. Your comments may be more interesting if you read articles linked before remarking

[Luminous Animal]

18. I did.Thanks for the whine.

[struggle4progress]

19. Snowden releasing a document, purportedly showing that Australia spied on Indonesia

and offered to share results with the US, doesn't seem to tell us anything about "empire" or "standards of freedom"

But the fact that it was released just in time to undercut Kerry's visit to Indonesia to discuss climate change might suggest a libertarian motivation for the release, namely, ideological hostility to any global agreements that might limit carbon emissions. We've seen that before, when the free-market libertarian Assange sabotaged the Copenhagen summit by releasing the emails that lead to the very noisy and very bogus "Climategate scandal" -- and, of course, both Greenwald and Snowden share Assange's ideology in this regard

[Luminous Animal]

20. Boo fucking hoo.

[11 Bravo]

22. I hope it's not too late to get a tuition refund on that Wit and Quick Retort course you took.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. Tsk. Tsk. NSA caught again.

[struggle4progress]

25. Consider reading articles linked before commenting

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. The snowboarding part or the crocodile part?

[struggle4progress]

29. exactly

[Thinkingabout]

27. Peehaps Snowden has been lead to believe his leaks can get a Libertarian elected.

Perhaps the libertarian party has been assuring Russia and China if they are in power then things will really be good for their countries. He has been making a deal with the devils, may all his deals fail. Now it is more than informing the American citizens, he is trying to get the legend in his own mind to accomplish his goals. He should be looking over his shoulder, and all coming after him will not be Americans. He is becoming the new face of terrorism. Putin told him to stop with his stories and he lives yet another day, yep, more going on there than meets the eye.

[Vattel]

30. How will these revelations undermine Kerry's efforts?